Woodward And Bernstein Reveal Shocking New Details About Richard Nixon

Forty years after the Watergate burglary, the Washington Post reporters who blew the lid off the scandal say that the scope of President Richard Nixon's misdeeds was far worse than they originally thought.

In a lengthy retrospective for this Sunday's Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward revisit the story that made them famous, and explain why Watergate was just a small window into the "massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities" that were the "way of life" in Nixon's White House.

The story is, in part, an attempt to debunk what Woodward and Bernstein view as the commonly accepted myth that the Watergate cover up was worse than the crime. Through a series of shocking anecdotes and recordings, the reporters reveal new details about the depth of Nixon's racism, paranoia, and corruption.

Nixon approved a top-secret plan to increase electronic surveillance of anti-Vietnam War activists, authorizing the CIA, the FBI, and the military to intercept mail and lifting restrictions on break-ins.

AP

Nixon's aides advised him that the plan was illegal, but the President approved it anyway.

Ultimately, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover rejected the proposal, but Nixon continued to obsess about these methods, and still implemented them often.

Nixon had a vendetta against one specific anti-war protester, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Daniel Ellsberg.

The publication of the Pentagon Papers in The New York Times sent Nixon into "rants and rages" recorded on tape, according to Woodward and Bernstein.

Although Ellsberg was already under indictment, Nixon ordered ex-CIA agent Howard Hunt and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to find information that could discredit him in the anti-war movement.

A year before Watergate, Nixon had his aides break into the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute, which reportedly had a file on former president Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the 1968 bombing halt in Vietnam.

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Although Nixon called for the break-in several times, it never happened, for unknown reasons.

Nixon's anti-Semitic rages were well-known to his staff, and White House tapes reveal the extent of his paranoia.

"In a July 3, 1971, conversation with [Nixon's chief of staff H.R. "Bob"] Haldeman, he [Nixon] said: “The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have a Garment [White House counsel Leonard Garment] and a Kissinger and, frankly, a Safire [presidential speechwriter William Safire], and, by God, they’re exceptions. But Bob, generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.”